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Arts & Ent. Club DJ - Club Night - Country Act - Electronic Act - Experimental Act - Folk Act - Hip Hop Act - Indie Act - Jazz Act - Karaoke - Latin Act - Mainstream Rock Act - Metal Act - Music Venue - Open Mic - Pop Act - Punk Act - Soul Act - Reggae Act - Strip Club - Art Gallery - Arts Advocate - Dance Troupe - Festival - Movie Theater - Museum - Theater Troupe - Thespian
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Best Club DJ 2nd: DJ Kittybat 3rd: Jimmy Joslin | ;
Best Pop Act 2nd: Mumpsy 3rd: Andy Matchett and the Minks | ;
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Best Club Night 2nd: Friday at Slingapour's 3rd: Torque at Crooked Bayou | ; Best Open Mic ; 1st: The Globe Thursdays ; 19 N. Orange Ave. ; 407-849-0471 ; www.wallstplaza.net/globe 2nd: Austin's Coffee 3rd: Natura Cafe | ;
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Best Country Act 2nd: Hindu Cowboys 3rd: The Lonesome City Travelers | ;
Best Punk Act 2nd: Awesome and the Ass Kickers ; 3rd: Slippery Slopes | ;
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Best Electronic Act 2nd: Taveovr DJ Team ; 3rd: Viernes | ;
Best Soul Act 2nd: Shaun Rounds Blues Band 3rd: Peter Baldwin | ;
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Best Experimental Act 2nd: Yip-Yip 3rd: (tie) Viernes 3rd: (tie) DRIP | ;
Best Reggae Act 2nd: Bob Marley: A Tribute to Freedom 3rd: Mystic NRG | ;
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Best Folk Act 2nd: tie – Matt Mendel 2nd: tie – Thomas Wynn & the Believers 3rd: Tommy Treadway | ;
Best Strip Club 2nd: Rachel's 3rd: Thee Dollhouse | ;
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Best Hip Hop Act 2nd: Krondor Krew 3rd: S.K.I.P. | ;
Best Art Gallery 2nd: CityArts Factory 3rd: Orlando Museum of Art | ;
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Best Indie Act 2nd: Andy Matchett & the Minks 3rd: Thomas Wynn & the Believers | ;
Best Arts Advocate 2nd: Mark Baratelli 3rd: Margot Knight | ;
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Best Jazz Act 2nd: Absinthe Trio 3rd: Shaun Rounds | ;
Best Dance Troupe 2nd: (tie) VarieTease 2nd: (tie) DRIP 3rd: Yow Dance | ;
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Best Karaoke 2nd: Korndogg's Rock Band Karaoke 3rd: Rising Star at Citywalk | ;
Best Festival 2nd: Nerdapalooza 3rd: Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival | ;
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Best Latin Act 2nd: Latin Express 3rd: tie – Abdias Ernesto Garcia 3rd: tie – Latin Quarter | ;
Best Movie Theater 2nd: Plaza Cinema Café 3rd: Regal Winter Park | ;
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Best Mainstream Rock Act 2nd: Megaphone | ;
Best Museum 2nd: Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art 3rd: Orlando Science Center | ;
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2nd: Khann 3rd: Gargamel! | ;
Best Theater Troupe 2nd: Mad Cow Theatre 3rd: Orlando Shakespeare Theater | ;
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Best Music Venue 2nd: Back Booth 3rd: Will's Pub | ;
Best Thespian 2nd: Brian Feldman 3rd: John DiDonna | ;
Writer's Picks
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Best concert windfall
;Traffic from Harvest of Hope Fest
;www.harvestofhopefest.com
This indie-minded St. Augustine music festival is only in its second year, but it has already established itself as a magnet that draws hot local bands to the area. Since the Orlando metro area is only a couple of hours away, the region has become a giddy recipient of the festival's spillover: The week of the fest, there's a revolving door of talent moving through our venues. Music fans can look forward to Harvest of Hope not necessarily to attend the festival itself, but to attend the local shows that come our way while it's going on.
;;Best regional trend
;The rise of Florida's ;indie-music scene
This has been a banner year for Florida indie bands, with three homegrown acts making national releases. First, South Florida's Surfer Blood made a beaming national debut with one of this year's most celebrated records, Astro Coast. Then, ascendant St. Pete psych-pop act Blind Man's Colour arrived on the national scene with its Wooden Blankets EP, a much-improved follow-up to its meandering debut album. Orlando's music scene was represented, as well, when experimental sound sculptors Viernes released their heady opus Sinister Devices in June. All three bands were signed by Kanine Records, a surging Brooklyn label co-owned by Orlando native Lio Cerezo.
;;Best big-screen bait and switch
;IMAX Digital at Universal Cineplex 20
;6000 Universal Blvd.
;407-354-3374
;www.amcentertainment.com/universal
The popular AMC cinema at CityWalk started to promote that it "now has IMAX," but when did they rip the roof off to install a seven-story screen? Here's the secret: They didn't. Unlike the old-school Regal Pointe Orlando Stadium 20 and IMAX, the Universal Cineplex 20's new and so-called "LieMAX" theater involves a barely larger-than-normal screen, digital projectors and blatant exploitation of the once-trusted IMAX brand. Suffer through Iron Man 2 on the second row aisle and you'll wonder why you spent that extra $5.
;;Best new ad-hoc theater district
;Fairbanks Avenue, Winter Park
;www.winterparkplayhouse.org
;www.breakthroughtheatre.com
;www.goatgroup.com
Downtown stalwarts SAK Theatre and Mad Cow Theatre are shuffling locations, and the city is shoveling dirt for a new performing arts center, all in hopes of creating a stable theater district. Folks in Winter Park aren't waiting around for that to happen. Between the recently expanded Winter Park Playhouse, the new community Breakthrough Theatre and the Greater Orlando Actors Theatre's hopefully soon-to-reopen Cherry Street space, the less-than lustrous Fairbanks Avenue thoroughfare has become north Orlando's Broadway.
;;Best chance to bemoan philistinism
;The demise of Urban Think! Bookstore
;625 E. Central Blvd.
;www.urbanthinkorlando.com
Despite its location in one of the most self-consciously trendy blocks of Orlando, the cultured folks at Urban Think! discovered that vacationland still won't support an actual intellectual exercise, instead opting for cookie-cutter bestseller stacks in big boxes. The small shop with a carefully chosen selection of new and used books closed in March after an eight-year run. The Urban Think! Foundation says it's still trying to decide what to do next, but last we heard the annual Page 15 Young Writers Camp would still be held there this summer.
;;Best substitute for music
;WMFE-FM (90.7) news-talk format
;11510 E. Colonial Drive
;407-273-2300
;www.wmfe.org
Cheers to local public radio for its pivotal format shift last November from classical music to news-talk. Orlando's thinking class deserves something of its own, dammit, and smart, cultured programming like The Diane Rehm Show and Fresh Air is a downright benediction. Music is one of our top passions, but we're glad to give up what was a nominal pleasure at most for the much greater good of balancing and elevating the city's intellectual dialogue. You know, not that we need it or anything.
;;Best architectural ;juxtaposition
;Seminole County sheriff's office ;and justice center
;100 and 101 Bush Blvd., Sanford
Just off 17-92 there's a short 3-D course in 20th-century architecture, mirroring its highs and lows. Facing down Bush Boulevard, to the right stands a harmonious modern synthesis: a little Art Deco, a little Bauhaus, a little International style mix in the Seminole County Sheriff's Office. To the left looms the Criminal Justice Center, with its forbidding and monotonous facade and square-columned cupola making a unified, if dismaying, architectural statement: stucco Stalinist.
;;Best vehicular venue for visual art
;TheDailyCity.com Mobile Art Show
;www.thedailycity.com
About a dozen different downtown venues participate in the monthly Third Thursday Gallery Hop, but most of those are in boring old buildings. Only one gallery dares to go outdoors: TheDailyCity.com Mobile Art Show makes its home inside a U-Haul truck parked at the corner of Pine Street and Orange Avenue. Curator Mark Baratelli ;consistently keeps the cool-stuff-per-square-inch ratio sky-high.
;;Best pretending that the economy hasn't killed local arts
;Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra and Mad Cow Theatre concert opera series
;www.orlandophil.org
When the Orlando Opera Company shuttered its doors (with an echoing scream of "Jim Ireland!") last year, the two other spokes in the city's performing-arts wheel were left in a lurch. The departure of singing fat ladies from the local stage also sapped the mood of fine arts enthusiasts in Orlando. Without so much as a signature nervous blink, Philharmonic executive director David Schillhammer set into motion a collaboration with local staging experts at Mad Cow that would allow the show to go on, as it must. Two successful stripped-down performances (with the orchestra on stage), Carmen and Porgy and Bess, took place this spring to glowing reviews. Musical ;lemonade, then.
;;Best dramatic myth
;The Orlando Peoples Critic
; www.facebook.com/orlandopeoplescritic
In spring 2009 a frustrated personage began writing glowing theater "reviews" and posting them on Facebook under the nom de plume "Orlando Peoples Critic." This individual has since stopped reviewing in favor of providing information on anything and everything that's going on around town. So perhaps a more appropriate moniker would be "Orlando People's Promoter." The person posting the information remains anonymous, and local arts groups are milking it, lapping up the free PR.
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